


Codependency

by greekowl87



Series: Tumblr Prompts [8]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 07:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13095075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekowl87/pseuds/greekowl87
Summary: Prompt was 'Panic Attack. Set seasons 1 and 2. My spin on "Irrestible."





	Codependency

Mulder did not recall exactly when the panic attacks would occur. Most definitely after Samantha was taken. It plagued him as a teenager. He managed to redirect all his energy into his studies and swimming at Oxford before Phoebe Green came along. The panic attacks would only come in the dead of the night. After Quantico and during his stint in BSU, the panic attacks still came at night, not as often, but it also morphed into a weird insomnia that kept Mulder from completely losing himself to the monsters and the world he had to venture too. Diana was a reprieve, but she left too, and that was one of his worst panic attacks to memory. All he had was himself and his x-files down in his little dusty basement office where no one bothered him.

Until she came in.

Special Agent Doctor Dana Katherine Scully who rewrote Einstein as an undergrad and was determined to debunk him with her skeptical and scientific know how.

And that’s when, for the first time in his long memory, the panic attacks ceased. Until her abduction.

Full force. It struck him full force one night while he sat on the couch in his dark apartment when he had her files before him spread out on his coffee table. He clutched her gold cross that he now wore, pinching the small cross between his index finger and thumb, trying to imprint her on him somehow. He choked her name out in sorrow, as a lifeline, crying out for his partner and the woman he had unknowingly fallen in love with.

The darkness surrounded him, encroaching on the last light he had left in hope of her return, the panic attack growing like brewing storm ready to destroy what little sanity and hope he had left. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He kept his hand pressed to his chest, trying to imprint the cross against his upper sternum. The tears were threatening to appear, no, it was like a dam had broken and he was drowning, unable to breathe.

It was like that for weeks and then she was miraculously returned to him and her family. And the surprising thing? She did not leave. That’s when the frequency of the late-night-early-morning phone calls increased. She always answered. At first, he tried to keep it strictly work-related, but their calls began to grow more personal in nature.

And she was still there. With him

Then the Twin Cities. A death fetishist named Donnie Pfaster and his macabre obsessions. And his unfortunate partner, Scully, caught in his web.

Her petite five foot two partner is made of stronger stuff than he had ever seen. He helped her up from the corner, untying Scully’s ropes as she cast a wary eye as Pfaster was dragged away.

He needed to make sure she was in one piece. “Why don’t you sit down until someone can take a look at you?” he asked her softly.

Mulder’s heart ached as bleary blue eyes focus on a particular spot on his bedraggled tie.

“Mulder,” she began, taking a breath and slowly exhaling it. “I’m fine.”

Mulder recognized the tightness in her voice, the uncertainty that was ratching in her chest as her breathing became sharper and shallower. He knew what was coming. Hesitantly, as this was new territory, he crooked his finger and gently tilted her head upwards, bring her eyes to meet his.

Mulder knew the paralysis that the mind could wreak havoc, either from a panic attack or horrible trauma, which is what Scully experienced. Her control slipped and tears stream down her face. At a loss to do anything else, Scully had always been the strong one to chase away the demons. His panic attacks, with the exception of her abduction, had all but ceased. Mulder just simply wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. She kept her arms around her self at first, as if trying to keep everything physically inwards. Mulder kissed her hair, wordlessly urging her to open up, and as if answering his pleas, she coiled herself around Mulder’s tall form, burrowing beneath his large trench coat, and cried.

… .

“Mulder,” she said softly outside of her motel room. “I’m fine.”

“Scully,” he began, unable to find any other words.

He wanted to tell her how easily she fit into his arms. How she could feel safe with him. That is was okay to cry. That, in the coming hours, her shipwrecked emotions would show its ugly face again, and she would lose control. She would panic.

“Mulder, I’m fine,” she whispered. “I promise.”

Don’t make a promise you can’t keep, he thought.

“Scully, I just think–”

“I didn’t ask you, Mulder. Good night.”

Without another word, she shut the door in his face. He licked his lips and nodded to himself. He looked down at his feet and heard her click on the tv and start the shower beyond the locked door. He would leave their adjoining door open just in case, even cracking it. He would stay up for her, he would wait for forever if he had to.

… .

Scully saw the scrapes on her face and bright red-turning-purple bruises emerging over her pale skin on her back and side of her ribs as she tore. The adrenaline was finally wearing off and her brain was finally able to process the night. The fear. The uncertainty of her death. The fight or flight instinct kicking in. Mulder. At this point, her body was on autopilot and she had placed her self in the scalding water, as she absently began to scrub her skin roughly over the already injured skin, marking her pale body even worse in punishment (was it punishment?).

Scully stopped immediately. Her last thought was of Mulder. Him holding her. Protecting her. But Pfaster. Pfaster was there. Looming over her. He wasn’t a man. Wait. Demon. No wait. He was human. Pfaster was a human. He bleed. But he loomed over her, not a man, but something else. He was looming over her.

She was not in her bath in the seedy motel. No. She was back in that closest, trapped, and tied, her mouth gagged trying to scream.

The next thing she knew was that large, warm hands grabbed her flailing wrists, stilling her. “Scully! Scully!”

She looked wildly around the room and realized what was happening. The bright light of the bathroom blinded her and she focused on the warm, concerned hazel orbs of her partner’s eyes. “Mulder?” she whispered distantly. “What are you doing here?”

She looked wildly down, noticing her naked body. He immediately let her wrists go and turned his head, useless grabbing a towel and holding it out as he looked away. “Um, you were screaming.”

“I wasn’t. I would have remembered it.”

“You were.” He knew better than to recite spurting psychological analysis and profile her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her discretely stand and he winced when he glimpsed at the damage she took. “Um, I’m sorry. I’ll leave, Scully.”

She sighed, and wrapped the town around her small battered body and looked down at the draining water from the tub. When did she pull the plug? “No,” she sighed, “um, can you wait outside for me?”

“Sure. Do you, uh, want me to get you anything?”

She held the towel tightly around her and mumbled into it, “No thank you.”

“Just uh…”

“I’ll call your name.”

“Scully,” he paused, at the doorframe. “It’s okay to feel. I had…I had panic attacks for years after Sam was taken. It’s okay to feel.”

Scully kept her eyes closed, feeling tears, shattered into a million pieces completely abandoned. She imagined Mulder snaking his arms again around her, swallowing her whole, and shielding her from the evils of the world. And he did it all so selflessly. She raised her head and stared at the closed bathroom door.

Outside, in the bedroom, Mulder sat uncomfortably at the edge of the bed, flipping uselessly through the television as the antennas failed to provide any proper picture and instead gave the “ssssccchhhh” sound of garbled, empty air. Uselessly, he turned off the tv and saw Scully open the door wearing an oversized gray FBI tee shirt and loose sleeping pants. Her hair was damp, just like that first night in the graveyard. She watched him wearily as if she was debating on trusting him.

“I’m so used to keeping my emotions inwards,” she began softly. “You saw that when my father died. Your sympathy…” Scully caught herself. “You empathy…you genuinely cared for my well being.”

“Why wouldn’t I, Scully?”

She shrugged, keeping her arms around herself. She kicked at the stained red rug and walked cautiously towards him. “I’ve never…I’ve never been in a situation like that, Mulder. Completely helpless. Bound.” She shuddered and sat next to him at the far edge of the bed. “You said it was okay to feel. Did the panic attacks ever stop, Mulder?”

He leaned back on his hands thoughtfully. “Not until recently. There was a time about three months ago that they came back, worse than ever, but after about five weeks, they went away again.”

He gazed at the ceiling and then finally looked at her. She did the mental calculations and connected her abduction and return. The double-loaded meaning weighed heavily on her heart and she scooted closer to her partner. “What…uh…what happened?”

“A petite, arrogant doctor, proclaiming that science ruled all walked into the basement office and introduced herself with a handshake,” he said softly, letting the unsaid message linger between them.

Scully nodded. “Will you stay…just for tonight, of course?” She admitted after a long, painful pause.

“Just for tonight, of course. I’ll, uh, I’ll take the floor. Just let me grab a pillow and blanket from next door.” He moved to get up and she caught his hand and looked at her in surprise. “Scully?”

“Just…I want you close.”

“Whatever you want.”

Wordless, Mulder pulled back the blankets and she slipped in on the right side and Mulder laid down on the far edge of the left side of the bed. Quietly, she grabbed his hand and pulled his arm and body along like a blanket until he spooned quietly behind her. She sighed and turned out the light. The street lights danced in the shadows as he took a deep breath and kissed her temple. “Was it me, Mulder?”

“Yeah,” he confessed to the darkness, to her. “I don’t know why, but it was.”

Scully ‘hmmed’ and buried her face into the pillow. “Do you think I’ll heal, Mulder,” she asked in a rare moment of vulnerability.

“You’re the strongest person I know,” he whispered simply.

“Thank you,” she mumbled before drifting off to sleep.


End file.
